


The Beautiful Scars Jobs

by DarkwingDukat (pushingcrazies)



Series: Operation: Cereal [4]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Discussions of kink but none actually depicted, Hurt/Comfort, I won't list all the kinks here, Multi, Never Have I Ever, Pay attention to the author's note, sensual cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:48:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27489094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingcrazies/pseuds/DarkwingDukat
Summary: Hardison is tired of Eliot making fun of his sexual prowess, so he challenges him to a modified game of Never Have I Ever. Unfortunately, he finds out a little bit more than he ever wanted to know.(Takes place in the Operation: Cereal!verse but can be read as stand-alone. First chapter is not explicit, but second chapter will be.)
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Series: Operation: Cereal [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1818454
Comments: 21
Kudos: 148





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> CW: this fic discusses a lot of different kinks, both in the context of “I have done that/would like to do that” and “No thanks that’s not for me.” Some of the big ones they touch on include sounding, watersports, and knifeplay.
> 
> This fic goes into a deeply scarring memory for Eliot that involves knifeplay. Major H/C warning. If you want to skip the details of the story, I marked the beginning and the end with “///.” I don’t think you miss much, just know that it was a difficult memory and left Eliot very wrung out.

Alec considered himself a pretty easy-going guy. He liked a good laugh as much as the next guy, even if the person getting laughed at was himself. Sometimes a dude had to roll with the punches, right? Alec could roll. Oh, yes, Alec could definitely roll. He didn’t survive living with upwards of six foster siblings at a time - some of whom (he definitely wouldn’t name names,  _ Brenda _ ) could get nasty when upset - without learning to ignore certain things; he didn’t survive high school with glasses and braces without learning to be wily; and he didn’t survive some tough situations with some nasty thugs without learning how to laugh at the jabs. Nothing quite took away a bully’s power like laughing along with them when they expected you to get angry or upset.

(Just better not say nothin’ about Nana, ‘cause then? Then Alec would have to end you.)

But sometimes, when a brother’s been up all night and barely got three hours of sleep and has been zombie-ing around the loft all day with itchy eyes and an inexplicably sore back, he felt he was justified in getting a little snappish, okay?

“Man, stop  _ sayin’ _ shit like that!”

His outburst was just forceful enough to make Eliot pause and raise his eyebrow. “Shit like what?”

Alec scowled at him. “‘Hardison’s a virgin,’” he said in a mocking falsetto. “‘Hardison doesn’t know how to please women.’ ‘Hardison didn’t have sex until Mr. Manly Sex-God  _ Eliot _ taught him how.’ Shit like that. I been havin’ sex a lot longer than you think.”

“So, what, two whole months? Three?” Eliot asked, except now instead of playful jibes, he was starting to look combative. Which meant they were heading for a full-on fight in a moment if one of them didn’t curb this argument. Except Alec didn’t want to curb the argument.

“Man, just ‘cuz I don’t take a new woman home every other night like  _ some _ people, doesn’t mean I didn’t have sex until Parker and I started dating. I’ll have you know I lost my virginity when I was a teenager,” Alec countered.

Eliot rolled his eyes, unimpressed. “Yeah, and how many women you been with since?”

“Wh- I didn’t keep count,” Alec exclaimed. Although, truthfully, it wouldn’t take long to list them off, if he cared to. “Besides, the number of women doesn’t matter so much as the  _ experiences _ I had with them.”

“Experiences, huh?” Eliot said. He had that tone he got sometimes, the one that said he didn’t believe Alec and was backing him into a carefully laid trap. “Y’all get into some freaky stuff?”

“It wasn’t  _ freaky _ , okay? Just, you know...different.” He could see Eliot about to protest, so he hurried on, “Besides, I don’t believe you’ve done half the shit you claim you done.”

_ That _ made Eliot’s eyebrows snap together in a frown. “You callin’ me a liar?”

“Noooo, no no no, of  _ course  _ not,” Alec said sarcastically.

“Hey,” Eliot snapped, jabbing a finger at Alec. It was gratifying to finally see him losing his chill a little. Now he sounded as rattled as Alec felt, and that made Alec smirk. “I never lie about what I’ve done. Ever.”

“Prove it,” Alec said.

“How the hell am I supposed to prove it?” Eliot demanded.

That...was a good question. Neither of them could actually prove their sexual experiences. Alec always respectfully turned off his security cameras before anything sexy was about to happen. Or if he forgot ahead of time, he made sure to erase it afterwards. And Eliot wasn’t the type to have cameras all over the place. “Never Have I Ever,” Alec said, the idea striking him out of nowhere.

“What?”

“It’s a game -” Alec started.

“I know it’s a game,” Eliot said defensively. “I ain’t gonna play a giggly little prepubescent girls’ game.”

“That’s Truth or Dare,” Alec said, just to watch Eliot’s eye twitch. “Never Have I Ever is more of a college drinking game.”

Eliot was still glaring, but his expression started to relax a little. It had been a long, grumpy day, and a beer or two didn’t sound like a bad idea, Alec supposed. “So, what, one of us says ‘never have I ever...been fucked in the ass by a guy,’ and then if the other person has done that, they have to drink?” He squinted suspiciously at Alec. “Sounds like I’m going to get drunk while you -”

“Yeah, yeah, while I never have to drink, very funny,” Alec said, cutting off yet another Hardison-the-virgin swipe. “Nah, we’ll have to change the rules a bit.” Eliot plopped down on the floor, intent on using the coffee table as their battleground. Hardison got out of his desk chair to retrieve a couple of beers from the fridge. On second thought, he grabbed a couple more. As he came back, he said, “We could do it where one of us says something we bet the other person has never done. Like, I bet you never been to a sex club. If I’m right, you gotta drink. If I’m wrong I gotta drink.” He sat down directly across the coffee table from Eliot.

“‘Kay.” Eliot nodded at the beer in Alec’s hand. “Drink.”

“Wha - that was just a practice, and no way in hell you actually went to a sex club,” Alec spluttered.

Eliot shrugged. “It was part of a protection detail, but it still counts. Drink.”

Before Alec could argue further, Parker dropped down onto the couch out of nowhere, then slithered onto the floor to join them. “I wanna play.”

Alec and Eliot exchanged a look across the table. Eliot looked concerned. Alec shook his head ever-so-slightly. “Okay, baby. How about you drink when you hear something that sounds like you’d like to try it?”

Parker popped open one of the beers. “So, if I want to go to a sex club, I would drink?”

Alec nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” She studied her beer for a moment. “What’s a sex club?”

Alec could feel a blush creeping up his cheeks. Talking about sex stuff with Parker was not exactly his forte.

Fortunately Eliot had no such qualms. “It’s a place where people go to have sex with each other. Some cater to certain kinky themes, others are just for people looking to spice up their sex life a bit.”

Parker made a face and set her beer down. “No, thanks.”

“My turn,” Eliot said. “I bet-”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on there, cowboy,” Alec interrupted. “A couple more rules. One, you can’t choose things that you  _ know _ I’ve never done. You can’t say ‘I bet Hardison’s never been barebacked by a guy,’ ‘cuz we already know that’s true.”

Eliot rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“And nothing that was done under duress counts as an experience,” Alec said firmly. This was something he wouldn’t negotiate on. He was  _ not _ into hearing stories about how Joe Blow held a gun to Eliot’s head and made him do something degrading and awful. Not tonight.

Eliot, however, seemed to miss Alec’s intention and was watching Parker for some sign of reaction. Parker was merely running her thumbnail over the edge of the bottle’s label. Probably about to start peeling it. Either way, she was completely oblivious to Eliot’s attention.

“Eliot,” Alec prompted.

“What?”

“Do you agree to that rule?”

Eliot frowned. “That rule’s for Parker, ain’t it?”

Parker glanced up. “Nope.”

Eliot’s eyes flashed as he stared at Alec. “I never forced anyone to do anything they didn’t wanna,” he growled. “If you think that -”

“No,” Alec interrupted quickly. “I meant, you know… the other way around. That stuff some guys made you do when…” He made a noncommittal gesture with his hand that he hoped conveyed exactly which part of Eliot’s life he was referring to.

“I  _ chose _ to do that stuff,” Eliot said. “Nothing ‘under duress’ about it, man.”

Alec sighed. “Fine. Yeah, I get it. But nothing where your choices were to get a guy off or someone was going to die, okay? Just - please?”

Eliot stared at him for a moment longer, until Alec was sure he was going to just get up and walk away. He didn’t, though. “Fine,” he said, and Alec breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Okay,” he said. “So now that the practice round is over, I get to -”

“Nope, I’m going first,” Eliot said. “I bet you’ve never used a cockring.”

“Ooh, I want Hardison to use a cockring, that sounds fun,” Parker said, and took a drink.

Alec grinned. “Drink, man.”

Eliot’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Yeah?” He took a swig of his beer.

“Yeah. It vibrated and it had this remote that she kept hold of so she could turn it on whenever she wanted.” It had sounded kinky and daring at the time, but the reality had left Alec jumpy and oversensitive. But if Parker wanted to try it sometime, he trusted her not to think that the middle of a video call with Nana was the perfect time to turn it on. “My turn?”

Eliot glanced at Parker, who shrugged. “Sure,” he said, turning a shit-eating grin at Alec. “Lay it on me.”

Alec grinned right back at him; he was fairly certain he had a slam-dunk. “I betchu never been fucked in the ass.”

Eliot waggled his eyebrows at Alec. “Drink.”

Alec spluttered. “Wha - but - I thought you and your army buddy only did hands and mouths!”

“We did.”

Alec frowned. “We just agreed…”

“You never said I had to be fucked in the ass by a guy,” Eliot pointed out.

Alec’s eyes widened. “You - you’ve been pegged?!”

Eliot’s eyes glazed over slightly as he took an absentminded swig of his beer, obviously forgetting the rules for a moment. “Mmm hmmm.”

Alec drank dutifully. “And you enjoyed it?” Oh, this was a whole game-changer in Alec’s eyes. Yes, this was very interesting information, indeed.

Eliot bobbed his head from side to side. “It was...different. I’m not opposed to a little fingering during head, but the dildo she used was not quite for a beginner.”

Parker’s hand shot into the air. “Just to be clear…”

“Dildo, strap on harness, lots of lube, my ass,” Eliot said.

“That’s a thing?”

“Yeah, that’s a thing, mama,” Alec said.

Parker took a huge gulp of her beer. “I  _ definitely _ want to do that.”

Alec glanced at Eliot, eyes wide. Eliot gave Parker an appraising look. Oh, yeah. That was something they could try out.

Eliot tipped his beer bottle at Parker. “Your turn.”

Parker made a confused face. “I don’t know very many sexy things.”

“Hold up, babe, I got you.” Alec pulled out his phone and did a quick search, scrolling for the result he was looking for. “Here.” He passed her the phone, a Wikipedia page pulled up with a list of various sex acts and kinks on it. “Choose any of them. If either of us haven’t done it, we gotta drink.”

Parker scrolled a little ways. “What’s a rimjob?”

Eliot slapped the table triumphantly. “Done it. Hardison?”

“Wait - whoa, hold up.” Alec gestured at Eliot to slow his roll while he addressed Parker’s  _ actual _ question. “Rimming is like eating someone out, but in the ass.”

Parker looked vaguely disturbed. “Why would anyone do that?”

Eliot shrugged. “The anus is a really sensitive area, Parker, for both men and women. It can be pretty stimulating. Remember what I showed you with Hardison’s prostate?”

“Yeah, but doesn’t it taste… well, like shit?” Parker asked.

“We knew we were going to be doing it, so I made sure I washed myself really well before she went down there,” Eliot said.

Whoa now, foul ball. “Nah, nah, hold up,” Alec interjected. “You said you’ve given a rimjob, not received one. Drink.”

“All she said was rimjob,” Eliot argued. “I’ve been involved in one; it counts.”

“Parker?”

Parker considered. “Either way. But I don’t think I want to try that one.”

Eliot smirked at Alec. “Drink.”

Alec grumbled but drank. Okay, time to get serious about this. “Next?”

“I bet you’ve never been tied up,” Eliot said.

Hah! “Drink.”

Eliot blinked, then his lips pulled into an impressed expression. “Huh. Did you like it?” He took a drink.

Well, that was another matter. “Not really, but I did try it. It wasn’t quite like being in a small space, but I didn’t like not being able to get free.”

Eliot and Parker exchanged one of those Looks they got sometimes when they thought he was being particularly Hardison-ish about something. “Handcuffs or rope?” Parker asked.

Alec coughed slightly. “Silk ties.”

Eliot rolled his eyes. “Those should’ve been really easy to get out of. Maybe we should put the fighting practice on hold and work on your escape skills.”

“You into being tied up, or is it, you know -” Alec wiggled his hand slightly. “Bad memories?”

“I like it with the right person - or people, I guess, now,” Eliot said.

They glanced at Parker. She shrugged. “If you try to tie me up, I’ll just break loose. I can tie Eliot up, though, if he likes it.”

“Okay, good to know,” Alec said. “My turn. I betchu never had your toes sucked on or sucked on someone else’s toes.”

Eliot actually had to think about that one for a moment. “Shit,” he said finally and took a drink. “You?”

“Nope, I just figured you weren’t into feet.”

“Yeah, not really my thing,” Eliot said. “Parker?”

“I’ve seen your feet - no thanks.”

Alec thought Eliot might have something to say about that, but he just shrugged. “Fair enough. Hittin’ ain’t really conducive to a good footcare regimen.”

“My turn.” Parker grinned at Eliot. “Hair pulling.”

Eliot gave her a puzzled look. “Yeah, I’ve had my hair pulled. Hardison’s the one who ain’t got enough hair for that.” He nodded at Alec. “Drink.”

“Oops.” Parker smacked her forehead. “I forgot you guys were competing about who’s done more sex things. I just wanted to know if you enjoy it.”

Actually, that was a really good question. Alec looked at Eliot, eager for the answer.

Eliot swallowed and looked a little sheepish. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m into it.”

“Like, on a scale from one to ten, ten being you’d come in your pants, where you at with it?” Alec asked, because why not poke the bear?

Eliot glared at him. “You still haven’t drank.”

Alec dutifully took a sip. “Okay, I did. So?”

Eliot grumbled something that sounded vaguely like “Try it and find out,” which - hell yes. Alec would definitely be trying that sometime in the near future.

Eliot rolled his beer bottle between his hands. It was already half empty, and Alec’s was a little lighter. They were definitely going to need more beer soon. “Edging,” Eliot said finally. There was a glint in his eye that suggested he’d been wanting to try that one on Alec for a while, and honestly? Alec wouldn’t say no to that.

He drank. “Never done it, but I do know what it is, yeah.”

“I don’t,” Parker said, looking back and forth between them.

“It’s where you get someone - guy or girl, doesn’t matter - real close to coming, but then you won’t let them come. And then you get them close again. You keep them on edge until they’re a mess, desperate to come.” Although he was talking to Parker, Eliot’s eyes were on Alec, dark and calculating. Alec’s blood spiked hot. He could just imagine Eliot laying him out and doing all manner of torturous things to him until he was begging for release. God,  _ yes _ .

Parker drank. “That sounds like fun. But only if I’m the edger, not the edgee.”

“Deal,” Alec said. “Hm, how ‘bout crossdressing?” he asked Eliot.

“Hell no, I ain’t done that,” Eliot said, taking a drink. “Have you?”

“I’ll have you know I look damn fine in a corset,” Alec said, pretending to be affronted. In fact, he had a few pieces of lingerie stashed away. He loved the way the silk felt against his skin, and as long as the corset wasn’t tied too tightly, he found it quite comfortable. Maybe he’d give them a show sometime soon, provided Eliot wouldn’t freak on him.

Based on the intrigued look on his face, however, Eliot probably wouldn’t freak. Alec didn’t think he’d ever be able to talk him into wearing some himself, but maybe he could find a way for them to work a kilt into one of their cons soon….

Parker broke through Alec’s musings by drinking the last of her beer. “I wanna crossdress. Especially if I get to peg Eliot afterwards.”

_ That _ mental image caused Alec’s brain to short-circuit. Parker dressed in masculine clothes, hair hidden under a cap, strap-on pushing into Eliot’s ass as he braced himself on the bed - yeah, Alec was getting hard. He reached down to adjust himself. Eliot watched him, smirking.

“You like that?”

Alec glared at him. “Don’t tell me you ain’t turned on.”

“I’m getting there,” he admitted.

They both glanced at Parker, who looked nonplussed. “No? We’re just talking about things that  _ might _ be fun. You’re both getting hard?”

“Uh, yeah?” Hardison said.

“And they say I’m weird,” Parker muttered, rolling her eyes. She popped open the extra beer Alec had grabbed earlier.

“Hold on, let’s all refill,” Eliot said before draining the last of his own. He hopped up and disappeared for a moment. Alec finished off his drink in two quick pulls. When Eliot returned, however, it was not with more beer but a bottle of tequila.

“Oh, hell naw. That is  _ not _ where this night is going,” Alec said, holding up his hands in surrender. Eliot could call him a pussy if he wanted, but Alec had never had a single good experience with tequila.

“C’mon, man,” Eliot said. “Shots up the ante. Maybe you can get me drunk enough to do one of those things Parker wants to try.”

Okay, that was a little tempting. That first beer must’ve loosened Eliot’s inhibitions a little, though it was odd for one beer to let him lower his defenses. Maybe this game was affecting him more than he wanted to let on.

Thing was, although Eliot was hanging around more often and becoming more comfortable with being part of their “throuple” or “triad” or whatever they wanted to call it, he was still a little skittish about actually initiating any intimacy. He wouldn’t even make out with one or both of them unless they started it. When he got horny, he was still far more likely to go to a nearby bar and pick up some woman to take back to his own place than to try to get something going in the loft. They’d talked about it a bunch, and Parker and Alec were fine with that being his way - for now.

So for Eliot to say nearly outright that he wanted to have sex with them tonight - potentially kinky sex at that - well, that was a big step for him. And Alec didn’t want to do anything that could discourage him from making an advance like that again.

So even though Alec rolled his eyes and asked, “Didn’t your daddy ever teach you beer before liquor?” he still got up to go fetch a bottle of orange soda.

Eliot stared at him. “You are not mixin’ my good tequila with that nasty crap.”

“Well, I ain’t doin’ shots, so it’s either this or I’m goin’ back to beer,” Alec countered.

Eliot growled the sort of growl that told Alec he was going to relent, but he was going to bitch about it. “Open it and drink some before I pour in,” he said.

Alec obeyed, then handed the bottle over to Eliot, who poured in way more than a shot’s worth of tequila. In fact, he poured in enough to nearly overfill the bottle. Alec stared at it, then at him.

“Oh, we are all going to regret this.”

Eliot poured his own tequila into a sipping glass. He offered the bottle to Parker, who shook her head. Eliot nodded and screwed the lid back on, setting the tequila aside but within reach in case they needed it again.

“Hey, how come you’re not bullying her into drinkin’ liquor?” Alec protested.

“You shoulda brought more beer earlier,” Eliot countered.

“I didn’t know Parker was gonna wanna play, and you was literally  _ just _ in the kitchen. You coulda brung more beer instead of tequila,” Alec said.

“Quit bitchin’,” Eliot said.

“Or what?”

“Boys,” Parker interrupted. She was engrossed in Alec’s phone, ignoring their sniping. “What’s a gloryhole?”

That stopped their argument cold. “It’s, uh, it’s - well -” Alec stammered.

“Jesus, Hardison, we’re all adults here,” Eliot huffed. “It’s a hole in a bathroom where a guy can put his dick and someone on the other side can suck him off. Totally anonymous.”

Parker shook her head. “Nope, don’t wanna do that.” She looked at them expectantly.

Alec unscrewed the orange soda bottle and was immediately assaulted by tequila fumes. He nearly choked as he took a cautious sip. “Nope.”

Eliot shook his head and also took a sip of his tequila. “I got no interest in gettin’ head from someone I can’t even see. My turn?” He ran a hand down his face. “I bet you’ve never done foodplay.”

“Do bodyshots count?”

Eliot blinked at him. “No way you done bodyshots.”

“Oh, I’ve done bodyshots,” Alec said smugly. “Drink.” As Eliot took another sip, Alec asked, “Would you wanna do foodplay?”

Eliot had to think about it for a long moment before he replied. “No, not really. Maybe like some whipped cream or something, but ain’t nobody puttin’ my food on their body. My food belongs on plates or bowls, not in someone’s armpit.”

Okay, fair. Alec had figured Eliot would be into foodplay, him being such a sensual person who put a lot of emotion into his food. But it also didn’t really surprise him that Eliot would say no. “A’ight. Um. I bet you never…” Wow, he was starting to lose focus. He struggled to remember any sex acts he was even vaguely familiar with. “Watersports.”

“Jet skis?” Parker asked, confused.

“No, he means pissplay,” Eliot said. He looked Alec directly in the eye and gestured to his bottle. “Drink.”

Alec’s jaw dropped. “No. No way. I call bullshit. You ain’t  _ never _ let someone piss on you without a gun to your head.”

Eliot shrugged. “I was fucking this woman once and she just wouldn’t relax, so I told her to just let go and ride it out. She relaxed a little too much.”

Alec drank. He was definitely starting to get a little fuzzy now. “Would you do it again?”

“Not intentionally,” Eliot said. “Parker, you wanna pee on one of us?”

“Or get peed on?” Alec added helpfully.

“Nuh-uh. No. No, thank you. People really  _ do _ that?” she asked.

“I mean, it was an accident for that woman,” Eliot said, “but yeah, people are into that sometimes.”

“Or omorashi,” Alec said, again being helpful.

Even Eliot looked puzzled at that one. “Whazzat?”

“It’s when one person has to pee so bad they wet themself.”

Eliot shook his head. “Not really my idea of sexy. Parker? Your turn.”

“Hm… Let me… What’s sounding?”

Although the coffee table was blocking most of Alec’s view of Eliot’s lap, he definitely saw Eliot clench his thighs together. “No way.” He took a big sip.

“Ain’t you gonna explain it to her?” Alec asked, grinning. “I mean, we are all adults here.” He took a sip as well.

“I - it’s - no.” Eliot looked uncharacteristically flustered. It was adorable.

The tequila mixed with a desire to make Eliot blush emboldened Alec enough that he said, “So, basically, you take a long thin piece of metal and put it into the guy’s urethra and -”

“Nope. Stop. Just - stop,” Eliot interrupted. Oh, yes, that blush looked magnificent, spreading down his neck and across his chest. Alec bit his lip.

“So, that’s a no on that, then,” Parker said.

There was a long pause as they waited for Eliot to take his turn, but Eliot seemed to still be hung up on sounding. “Eliot?” Alec prompted.

“Huh? Oh. Uh, fisting. Give or receive,” Eliot said, coming back to the present.

Alec’s eyebrows shot up. He took a drink. Man, the kinkier the rounds got the more he was falling behind. Parker was barely tipsy, thanks to sticking to beer, and Eliot hadn’t gone through much of his tequila yet. “You’ve really done that?”

Eliot nodded. “Yeah, once.”

“Is it just like what it sounds like?” Parker asked.

“Yeah.” Eliot held up a finger and made a little crooking motion. “Fingering.” Then he held up his fist and gave it a couple of pumps. “Fisting.”

Parker considered that for a long moment before at last she brought her beer to her lips and drank.

Eliot’s eyes widened. “You wanna give or receive?”

Parker blinked at him. “You can fist a guy?”

“Well, it takes a lot of prep, but yeah,” Eliot said. “So you want one of us to fist you, then? I thought you weren’t really into penetrative sex.”

Parker swallowed. “I - maybe. Maybe it’ll feel different than regular sex.”

Eliot nodded. “It does feel different. I mean, I don’t know from personal experience, but the woman I did it with, she said it was like nothing else.”

Alec watched them discuss it, content to sit back and watch. Every day he was astounded at how lucky he was. Sure, Eliot could be a stubborn bastard, and sure sometimes dealing with Parker was like dealing with a minefield, but ultimately, they were amazing people and he was so grateful to call them his. And watching them like this - Parker allowing herself to be a little vulnerable and Eliot taking the time to understand - made his heart soar.

Eliot caught him watching and narrowed his eyes slightly. Alec must have a dopey, half-drunk grin on his face. Eliot still wasn’t quite used to having someone - a guy, no less - be so damn in love with him, and it made him edgy sometimes. But all he said was, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Your turn, Hardison,” Eliot said. His tone turned teasing. “Man, I sure would like to actually drink this tequila sometime.” He swirled it around in his glass and brought it to his nose. “Too bad I’ve actually done more things than you thought I had. Too bad I’m actually as experienced as I said I was.” He set the glass back down on the coffee table.

Alec made a face at him. He tried to pull his tequila-foggy brain back on track and think of something that there was no way Eliot could’ve possibly done. Scat was a distinct possibility, but then again Alec would have said so about pissplay, too. Domination? Maybe. Spanking? No, that was too mild - he would have definitely tried that out at some point. Pet play was unusual enough that he probably wouldn’t have taken part in it, even if his date was into it. But Alec didn’t want a “probably”; he wanted a slam-dunk “definitely not.” “Knifeplay,” he said triumphantly, knowing there was no way Eliot would be into cutting anyone up for sex reasons.

He realized his mistake almost immediately. A shadow crossed over Eliot’s face and the openness from before slammed shut. He reached for his glass, hesitated, reached for it again, drew his hand back with a frown.

“Drink, man,” Alec said, begging. “Just drink.” Please, please drink.

Eliot swallowed. “No one was going to die if I didn’t go through with it.”

Alec shook his head, causing his balance to teeter even sitting down. “You weren’t into it, it don’t count. Drink.”

“You’re changing the rules,” Eliot said, so quietly it was nearly a whisper.

“I don’t care,” Alec said, just as softly. “Please, just…”

/// 

Parker had been watching their conversation with sharp, calculating eyes. When Eliot still didn’t drink, simply sat there staring at his tequila, lost in some dark memory, she asked softly, “Who?”

Eliot looked at her, and Alec knew - he  _ knew _ -and he silently begged Eliot not to say the name. Eliot glanced at him, as if he could hear the silent plea, and said instead, “He was always surrounded by women, but every couple of months he would choose one who was all his.”

Alec closed his eyes as if this could block out the story, make it not true.

“No one was allowed to touch her. Sometimes we weren’t allowed to look at her.” Eliot took a drink at last, although Alec wasn’t sure if it was for fortification or if he was finally acquiescing that this incident was nonconsensual. “This woman was different from the other ones he’d chosen before. She was a flirt. She liked gettin’ the men to cross his boundaries and then watch him punish them. I think she got off on it.

“One time she’d been flirtin’ with me pretty hard, trying to mess me up. I was refusin’ to fall into the trap, and I think she saw me as a challenge. Later, he called me into his office, and she was there, too. He said he heard I wanted his woman. I didn’t deny it, because if she wasn’t his? I’d’ve been all over her. She was… beyond beautiful.” His eyes clouded, lost in memory.

Alec’s heart twisted so hard he thought he might cry.

“He said nobody was allowed to touch his woman - except.” Eliot held up a finger. “Except he liked me a lot and maybe he could make an exception just this one time. And he asked her, would she like to sleep with me? She looked me over like a piece of meat, walked all around me. Finally she said yes.

“He said, okay, yes, just this once he would let me sleep with his woman. But there was a catch. He was going to make love with her at the same time. And he was gonna keep count of every time I touched him. After all, I didn’t  _ want _ to touch him, right?”

That motherfucker, Alec fumed silently. While it was true Eliot had come a long way in squashing his internalized homophobia, there was no way that hadn’t reinforced it big time.

“I did my best, but it was impossible not to accidentally graze him a few times. Our hands were everywhere and sometimes it seemed like she was movin’ herself so that we’d end up in the same spot at the same time. So after it was all over, and I’m still kinda out of it, he turned over and just said, ‘six.’

“It took a moment for me to remember what he was talking about. I still didn’t know what he had in mind for punishment, but then he pulled out this knife. It was a small switchblade, just a couple inches long, but sharp as hell.” Eliot’s lips twisted. “He normally didn’t like to hurt people himself, so it was almost like it was this huge honor that he was going to cut me up.” 

Alec closed his eyes again, silently begging for the story to be over. There was a long pause. When Alec blinked his eyes open again, Eliot was simply staring at his tequila. Normally this would be where Eliot would gruffly dismiss the memory as no big deal and change the subject, or else get up and leave without another word. He did neither. He simply sat there and waited for - what? Condemnation? Absolution? Banishment? Alec didn’t know.

Thank God for Parker and her uncanny understanding of the way Eliot’s mind twisted and bent. She simply gave him a searching look and said, “Stand up.”

Eliot frowned at her but did as he was told. He stood ramrod straight, a military man ready for inspection. It somehow made Eliot seem even more vulnerable, him standing tall while they observed him from below. Parker slid around the coffee table, still down on her knees. Without waiting for acknowledgement or permission, she opened his belt and fly, and pulled down his pants.

For a wild moment, Alec thought she was going to try to get him hard and suck him off right there in the living room after that horrendous story, but she had other plans in mind. She carefully eased one side of Eliot’s boxers down past his hip, revealing first a round, raised scar (an old bullet wound, and Alec hated that he knew what one looked like and that Eliot had half a dozen scattered over his body) and then a series of pale lines. Alec cocked his head to get a better look. He’d never stopped to examine Eliot’s scars before, knowing each one was connected to a memory of pain and violence. If forced to guess what these lines were from, he might have said a vicious cat scratch or maybe he’d gotten pressed up against a particularly sharp grate or something. But now that he looked closer, he could see that they were six evenly spaced tally marks - five vertical and one diagonal through the first four.

Parker ran her fingers over the scars, gently prodding them. Alec was sure they didn’t hurt Eliot anymore, but he flinched anyway. Alec could just imagine what they’d looked like fresh, the vertical ones angry and deep, the diagonal one cutting the flesh into jagged strips that would’ve been difficult to heal without stitches, yet there was no sign of any. Alec could picture in his head the strips of flesh hanging down and -

He tore his eyes away, whipping his head around so fast he went dizzy and he had to gulp a couple of times to keep the tequila in his stomach. He let out a long, slow breath.

///

“In a way, I’m almost glad it happened,” Eliot whispered. Alec looked back over at him. He shrugged. “By the end of my time with him, I hated everything he stood for. So if he thought touchin’ another guy during sex was worth that kinda punishment, then maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. That’s when I stopped lookin’ at the things I knew how to do with men as something shameful and more just another tool that I could use when I needed to.”

Alec shook his head, still unable to speak. The idea that maybe they wouldn’t be here together if - no. It was too much to bear. He stood up and crossed the short distance to where Eliot waited, ducked down and captured Eliot’s lips in a fierce kiss.

_ He doesn’t have a claim on you anymore, _ the kiss said.

And,  _ I wish there was a worse punishment than rotting in a dungeon for the rest of his life. _

And,  _ You’re ours. _

And,  _ I love you so fucking much. _

Alec didn’t know how much of what he meant came through in the kiss, but from the way Eliot responded almost as desperately, he got at least some of it.

“Naked cuddles,” Parker announced from the floor.

Eliot broke away from Alec with a strained laugh. “What?”

“It’s naked cuddling time,” Parker said, standing up and moving towards the bedroom without any further elaboration. She started pulling off clothes as she went.

Eliot raised his eyebrows at Alec, waiting for elucidation. Alec huffed a humourless laugh. “It’s not a sexual thing,” he explained. “It’s just something Parker does sometimes when she’s feeling particularly vulnerable.” She couldn’t really explain to him why naked cuddles were so soothing when she felt like that, although Alec had his theories. The way she pressed into him, like she was trying to crawl into his very skin spoke volumes when she couldn’t. “I know it ain’t really your thing, but…” He let the offer hang.

Eliot wavered. He glanced at the door, clearly thinking about just leaving and going to deal with his memories on his own. He looked back at Alec. Something hardened in his eyes. He stepped resolutely out of his pants, which were still bunched around his ankles, kicked them to the side, and followed in Parker’s wake.

Alec paused just long enough to pick up Eliot’s jeans and drape them over the couch arm. Eliot was by no means a clean freak, but it was definitely not like him to leave clothes crumpled up on the floor, unless he was really tired or really hurt (not that he would ever admit to either). By the time he reached the bedroom, Parker was completely naked and curled up on the bed. Eliot was down to just his boxers, but seemed to have stalled out. Alec eased around him and quickly peeled off his own clothes to join Parker.

She immediately latched onto him, burrowing as close as humanly possible into his chest. Eliot watched this with an inscrutable look on his face. Simultaneously, Alec and Parker each reached out a hand towards him.

Slowly, with a tiny stutter in his step, Eliot walked towards the bed. He paused at the edge and carefully eased his boxers down. The scar that Alec had never paid any mind to before now seemed to glow in the dim bedroom light. Alec shuddered, but he didn’t let his hand drop. Not until Eliot was snug up against Parker’s back. He curled around her, fitting perfectly along the contours of her body. Alec sighed in relief and contentment, so happy to have both his people here and alive, if a little damaged.

Alec let his arm drape over both their bodies, holding them securely against each other and himself. Eliot ran a hand up and down Parker’s side before sliding it along Alec’s arm and up to his shoulder. Then he gave Alec the same treatment.

They didn’t speak. Naked cuddling time wasn’t usually a time for chatting or verbalizing whatever was going on in their heads. Eliot seemed to pick up on that right away - not that it was very different from how he normally was. They were simply content to touch each other, letting their hands linger and explore without the expectation that it would lead to sex. It was too early for real sleep, though the tequila and beer made Alec drowsy enough that he dozed.

After a little while of constant motion, Eliot’s hand paused. It was enough to bring Alec back to something resembling wakefulness. “Wuzzup?” he mumbled.

Eliot breathed out, long and slow, like whatever he was going to say needed him to pluck up his courage to say it. “I’m glad I’m here,” he said softly.

Alec squeezed his hip - the one with the scar. Parker wriggled even further back into him. “We’re glad you’re here, too,” Alec said. Parker hummed her agreement.

No, none of them had gotten this far in life completely whole and undamaged, but that was okay. Because they had each other to fill in and support the broken pieces.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for canon-typical violence and Parker getting all Parker-y about a zit (she likes to poke things, okay?). Pretty much if I'm in a fandom for too long, I HAVE to do a body-exploration fic. And that's this.

Parker lives her life by maps and blueprints.

It’s not all that unusual, she supposes. Hardison and Eliot live their lives by maps, too, after all. It’s just that Hardison’s maps are usually intangible code, while Eliot’s are typically the best escape route for him and his team from any situation, building, city, state, or country. And it’s not like she’d be totally lost without her blueprints. Give her fifteen minutes and a flashlight, and she can form a rough map in her mind of the building’s rooms, dimensions, and vents, plus any security features. All the important stuff for a thief to know.

Buildings are easy to explore. They don’t care if she stares too hard or lingers too long in a particular spot. They don’t care about the blemishes and scars they’ve accumulated throughout the years. People do, it turns out. And the sucky thing is she actually cares that they care. Not all people, of course; just her people. Her Hardison and her Eliot.

Eliot’s story about how he got the tally marks on his hip awakens a strange impulse in Parker’s mind. Both her boys are littered with marks - Eliot more so than Hardison - each with a story behind it. She wants to poke and prod each one, until they spill more stories and she can build a mental blueprint of the experiences that brought them to her.

The morning after the game of Never Have I Ever, Eliot slips out of their bed and out of the apartment before either Parker or Hardison wake up. Parker rouses and feels a twinge of regret that she can’t start building her blueprint right away. She knows it’ll take time before he’s back there again, with his defenses down far enough that he’ll let her do what she needs to do. It’s like an itch she can’t scratch - but she is willing to ignore it until the moment arrives organically.

That moment arrives a few weeks later. They’ve been curled up on the couch together, watching old horror movies until even Eliot is yawning and nodding off. Hardison jolts out of a snoreful doze and finally finds the wherewithal to turn off Netflix. He stretches his long limbs out to their fullest extent, then collapses bonelessly back into the cushions.

“I can’t get up,” he tells the others reproachfully.

Eliot pokes him in the side. “Get up.”

“Nah, I can’t.” He holds his arms limply up into the air. “You’ll have to carry me.”

Eliot raises an eyebrow. “Carry your own damn self.”

“Is that Eliot-speak for ‘I can’t do it but I’m not gonna admit it’?” Hardison grins.

“Of course I  _ can _ carry your ass, I just ain’t gonna let you be any lazier than y’already are.”

“It’s okay, Eliot,” Hardison says, as if Eliot hadn’t even spoken. “I understand even the great Eliot Spencer has his limits an- hey, whoa, hold - AH.”

Next thing any of them know, Eliot is on his feet with six-plus feet of lanky tech geek draped over his shoulders. “Don’t squirm,” he snaps and heads for the bedroom. “I’ll drop you on purpose.”

“No, you won’t,” Hardison squawks.

“Down the stairs.”

Parker follows after her boys, turning off lights and checking the security systems. By the time she steps through the bedroom door, Eliot has already deposited Hardison onto the bed and they’re tussling over something. From the looks of things, Hardison is trying to hold onto Eliot so he can’t leave, while Eliot is being as compliant as a particularly stubborn eel. Of course, Parker knows, if Eliot’s really intent on leaving, he could easily break out of Hardison’s grip and just go. It says a lot that he hasn’t.

Parker steps behind Eliot and snakes her arms around his waist, pressing her body against his back. He stiffens for just the slightest of moments before relaxing into her grip. His fight against Hardison’s clutches slows, then stops, and they all know he’s caught.

“Sleep. Here,” Parker says firmly, and Eliot grumbles but steps back enough that he can shuck off his jeans. Parker sheds her clothes as well before going over to the dresser and pulling out a sleep shirt and shorts.

When she turns back around, Eliot is staring at her. “What?” She glances down to see if her clothes are stained or ripped or she’s wearing a harness she forgot about (again). Nothing. Just an old Nintendo t-shirt she stole from Hardison and -

“Those are my boxers,” Eliot says, nodding at her sleep shorts.

“Yes?” She’s not really seeing the issue.

Eliot’s brow furrows. “How did you get a pair of my boxers?!”

Parker smiles. “A thief never reveals her secrets.” She skips over to the bed and climbs under the sheets. Hardison has stripped down to his boxers and is fluffing up his pillow.

“Magicians,” Eliot says, stalking to the opposite side of the bed from Hardison and shoving the covers back. He slides something under his pillow that she’s pretty sure is a knife. Just in case. “Magicians never reveal their secrets. Thieves are just thieves.”

“Thieves are their own brand of magician,” Hardison says sleepily. “Now you see it…”

Parker holds up Eliot’s keys, which she had secreted from his jeans pocket earlier in case he needed extra convincing to stay the night. “Now you don’t,” she finishes.

Eliot snatches his keys out of her hand with a huff that would sound irritated to an outsider but sounds slightly amused to Parker and Hardison. “Well, who’s gonna magic over to the light switch and turn them off?” he asks. “Ain’t gonna be me.”

“I gotchu, man,” Hardison says. He grabs a remote out of the nightstand drawer and clicks the lights off. “That was, like, the first thing I installed.”

Eliot sighs. “Dork,” he says, but it’s tinged with affection. “Night.”

“Night.”

\---

Parker wakes a few hours later. She rises up ever so slightly so she can peer over Hardison to see the bedside clock. It reads quarter after seven in the morning. By some miracle Eliot is still asleep.

The itch is more persistent than it has been for a while, and now she just might have the perfect opportunity to scratch it. She bites her lip, considering; starting with Eliot would make more sense since he’s more likely to bolt if given enough time to think, but he’ll also be more time consuming and more emotionally draining. Hardison will be faster and easier, but harder to wake. The itch becomes so intense she can’t ignore it any longer, and she makes a decision, reaching out to brush a hand against Hardison’s side.

He doesn’t react, doesn’t stir - but Eliot is awake immediately. He tenses, alert. “Wha’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she murmurs back. She tries running her nails whisper-light up Hardison’s ribs, where she knows he’s ticklish. This at least gets a reaction - he squirms away from her - but he’s still asleep.

Eliot presses up against her back, and she takes a moment to enjoy the feel of him through her t-shirt. He reaches past her to grip Hardison firmly by the ear and give it a sharp tug. Hardison is awake immediately, spluttering and looking around wildly. “Wh- wha- who -?” He catches sight of them and glares. “What the hell?”

Eliot snickers into Parker’s shoulder, causing her to shiver. “Betcha his nana used to do that when he was in trouble.”

Hardison rubs his ear, still scowling. “Yeah, what of it? Why’d you wake me up?”

When Parker doesn’t answer, Hardison glances at Eliot for clarification. Eliot just shrugs. “I was just goin’ along with her. What’s up, Moonbeam?”

Parker smiles at his invocation of her special nickname. He only uses it when it’s late or he’s post-orgasmic or she’s being extra “Parker-y” as he calls her when she gets like this. She swings a leg over Hardison’s hips and pulls herself up on top of him. She grabs the light remote and turns them on, causing Hardison to groan and shield his eyes while Eliot blinks against the sudden brightness.

“If you wanted some hanky-panky, couldn’t it wait until I’d had a little more sleep?” Hardison grouses, rubbing his eyes. “And without blinding me?”

Parker rolls her eyes and pulls his hands down. “This isn’t about sex,” she says. From the look the boys exchange, they don’t understand. Yet. They will. They don’t always get her intentions right away, but eventually they understand. That’s why they’re her boys.

She starts at the top of his head. His hair is short enough that a quick inspection reveals nothing. She moves down to his forehead, eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, nose, lips. Nothing. His breathing is even and he stays quiet, but his eyes burn with curiosity and he’s practically vibrating with unspoken questions. She rewards his silence with a quick peck on his lips.

Her fingers slide from his chin to each of his ears. She rubs them gently, feeling for any anomalies. Up at the top of the left lobe, she feels a divot in the cartilage. She peers at it.

“What’s up, mama?” Hardison asks quietly.

Eliot leans closer to look at what’s caught her attention, careful not to get in the light. “It’s a scar,” he says.

“Oh, that? That ain’t no big deal.” Hardison’s hands rub against her hips reassuringly. “One of my foster siblings threw a rock at my head. I ducked, but not quick enough. Oh, you shoulda seen Nana whoop his ass when she saw me covered in blood. Didn’t even hurt that much, but it bled like crazy, and that freaked me out more’n anything.”

Eliot shifts a little, relaxing back into the mattress, filling in the space Parker had vacated. “How old were you?”

“I just moved in with Nana, so I musta been ten or so,” Hardison muses. “I’d completely forgotten about it. I didn’t know you could still see the scar.”

“It’s faded,” Eliot says, “but it’s there.” He reaches out to trail his fingers in Parker’s wake.

Parker leans down and brushes her lips against the soft skin, then looks expectantly at Eliot. A wary understanding begins to dawn in his eyes. Gaze still holding hers, he also dips down and kisses the mark. Hardison’s breath stutters slightly. Parker smiles her approval and moves further down.

She explores his neck carefully, searching for any sign of the cut Eliot pressed into it just a few months ago. Nothing. She breathes a mental sigh of relief. Eliot has been slowly opening up to them, but she thinks he might not be able to fully put himself into the relationship if he has a visual reminder of hurting Hardison. She trails her fingers along his Adam’s apple and down to his clavicle. Nothing. She edges over to his right shoulder. He shifts under her, and she realizes he’s getting hard.

She pokes him sharply in the shoulder. “I said this isn’t about sex.”

Eliot snickers as Hardison stammers out a protest. “I can’t help it, mama, you’re all up on my body and you’re sitting right on my crotch! I’m only human. I know y’all think I’m a god an’ all, but -” He cuts himself off, looking up earnestly into Parker’s eyes. “Maybe if you explain what this  _ is _ about, then?”

“I’m making blueprints,” Parker says simply.

Hardison turns to Eliot, who nods solemnly. “Makes sense,” Eliot says.

“It does?” Hardison asks.

Eliot shrugs. “In a Parker way, yeah. You’ll see.” He nods to Parker. “Keep going.”

Parker lifts Hardison’s right arm and examines it from every angle. Just above the crook of his elbow she finds another mark, this one vaguely splotchy. She presses her thumb into the skin and watches it change color.

“I don’t remember that one very well,” Hardison says softly. “I was real young. Still livin’ with my mama. I think something fell off the stove or splashed from a frying pan or… I don’t know. In the kitchen for sure. I remember it hurt like hell. I cried for hours.”

Parker kisses the mark, committing his words to memory. She has a hard time thinking of him as anything other than who he is now, but she knows what a small, crying child looks and sounds like. Did his mother comfort him? Did she put soothing lotion on the burn? Or did she just leave him to cry? He doesn’t speak about his birth mother much, and never at all about his father.

Eliot leans across Hardison’s stomach and adds his kiss before settling back down. He doesn’t offer to search the other half of Hardison’s body, content to let Parker take her time. She lifts Hardison’s arm to inspect his forearm, wrist, hand, fingers. Right on the meaty part of his hand, she finds a sharp little divot. She pokes at it.

“Fell outta a bunk bed,” Hardison says. “Landed on a broken cassette box. Paulie said it was a accident, he didn’ mean to unhook the ladder, but I dunno. After that, I always checked to make sure the ladder was properly hooked up before I stepped on it, though.”

Parker kisses this scar before passing Hardison’s hand over for Eliot to do the same. As she starts to lay his hand down, she pauses and then brings his hand back to her lips. She presses a kiss to each of his fingertips.

“Wuzzat for?” Hardison asks, puzzled. “Ain’t no scars there.”

Not physical scars, no. But built into his fingertips are the memories of late nights of research, of frantic typing to keep his people out of danger, of dozens of aliases from all walks of life. His fingers have saved them almost as many times as Eliot’s fists or Sophie’s smile. They’re good fingers, and she wants them to know she appreciates them.

All that is too much to explain in words, so instead she just smiles and says, “I like your fingers.”

Hardison grins and Eliot waggles his eyebrows at that, so she smacks each of them on the arm. “For the typing,” she specifies, because her boys have naughty minds. “And for other things,” she concedes, because, well, it’s true. He has very gifted fingers.

“Agreed,” Eliot says, but he does not offer to add his kisses to Hardison’s fingers. That’s fine, Parker figures. His blueprint doesn’t need to be identical to hers, especially since he’s not as reliant on blueprints as Parker is.

She drops Hardison’s right hand and moves back up to his left shoulder. Here she finds a long, thin scar - probably just a scratch, but a long one. She pokes at it thoughtfully. It seems like she should know this one.

“That ice cream parlor job,” Hardison confirms. “Remember I had to -” He mimes punching something.

Parker remembers now. Hardison had gotten the scratch in the course of the fight before Eliot had come to his rescue. He whined about it for days. Eliot rolls his eyes as he leans forward to kiss this one first, but Parker knows he hates not being there when any of them are in danger. At least this time it had been a little scratch, not a knockout blow that landed Hardison in a coffin. Parker dips down to press her lips to the warm skin.

Hardison’s left arm is as unmarked as his right. She finds a couple of weird hairs and a mole that she commits to memory, but no scars. Eliot runs his hand along Hardison’s arm as well, expression a mix of exasperation and admiration. “I bet you ain’t even broken a bone,” he grumbles. He sounds annoyed by that, but Parker suspects he likes how unmarred Hardison is. Not like him.

Well, they’ll come to him in a few minutes. First, she needs to finish with Hardison.

On his left wrist she finds another little scratch, which he can’t even remember how he got. And on one of his fingers she finds a weird little freckle. She frowns on it. Do people get freckles on their fingers? She studies it closely, turning his hand this way and that to examine it from several angles.

Eliot sits up to take a closer look. “What is that?”

“Lemme see.” Hardison carefully slips his hand out of hers and peers at the little mark. His eyebrows shoot up. “Damn, I didn’t realize y’all could still see that.”

“Just barely,” Eliot says. “Gotta be lookin’ real close. What is it?”

“It’s from when I got stabbed with a pencil.”

Parker and Eliot stare at him, then glance at each other. “Story,” Parker demands.

Hardison shrugs and drops his hand to rest on Parker’s thigh. “In, uh, middle school I think, this girl was teasing me, pretendin’ like she was gonna draw on my notebook durin’ class. I kept swattin’ her away. Then her pencil came down at the wrong angle just as my hand came flyin’ up and the pencil lead embedded so deep it broke off and stuck there. The scar was blue-grey for ages.”

“Awww,” Eliot says, grinning. “That little girl liked you and you prob’ly broke her heart.”

“Did you cry?” Parker asks.

“Hell no,” Hardison exclaims. “I ain’t gonna cry just ‘cause some little girl stabbed me in the hand with her pencil.”

Eliot grins at Parker. “That means he cried like a baby.”

“Yup,” Parker agrees over Hardison’s continued protests. “Like a little girl.”

“Like a little, baby girl.”

“Fine,” Hardison huffs. “Yeah, I cried. I’d like to see a little kid who doesn’t cry at getting  _ stabbed _ .”

“You said you were in middle school,” Eliot points out. “Means you would’ve been at least eleven.”

“So?”

“So you wasn’t a little kid.”

“I was  _ stabbed _ ,” Hardison says again, like maybe Eliot missed it the first half dozen times.

“With a  _ pencil _ .”

“It didn’t even hurt, actually,” Hardison says. “It didn’t really hurt and it wasn’t bleedin’, but I’d been stabbed and the pencil lead was still stuck in there. It freaked me out a little.” He rolls his eyes at Eliot. “We can’t all be learnin’ jiu jitsu from the cradle.”

“Whatever,” Eliot says. “I ain’t kissin’ that ridiculous little thing.”

Parker doesn’t have any objections to kissing it, so she does. Doesn’t matter how inconsequential the incident may seem in retrospect, it clearly had an impact on Hardison (figuratively as well as literally). And when she holds Hardison’s hand up to Eliot’s lips, in spite of his protests, he still presses them to the scar. Parker grins and gently returns Hardison’s hand to the mattress.

Next comes his torso. Parker spreads her hands out wide and places them on his pecs. His chest is so broad her hands look tiny. She likes that. She runs her fingers down his chest, brushing against his nipples just to cause him to jump and shudder. This might not be about sex right now, but Parker wouldn’t object to it becoming about sex later, when she’s finished. Hardison’s sternum and belly are flat, unmarked. She pokes a finger into his belly button, which makes him squirm in a funny way, so she does it again. She runs her fingers through the hair that leads down to his waistband, and yes he’s definitely hard now. She searches again for anything she might have missed, but there’s nothing, not even any moles, for her to poke at.

Parker scoots off Hardison’s crotch and gently eases his boxers off. His erection isn’t to the point of leaking precum quite yet, though she knows it’s close. He freezes as she brings her attention back to his waist, examining the skin all creased by his waistband. She’s gentle as she lifts his cock to examine it from every angle. She doesn’t expect to find anything here, but she wants to make sure. So she’s a little surprised when she moves to his scrotum and finds a few little lines that look like -

“Are those stretch marks?” Eliot asks, peering closer.

“What?” Hardison sits up. He’s not nearly flexible enough to get all that close, but he squints to see better. “Why do I have stretch marks on my balls?” His erection definitely starts to flag at this revelation.

Parker looks at Eliot for clarification - maybe all guys get stretch marks down there - but he just shrugs. “I never looked that closely before,” Eliot says. “It’s probably nothin’.”

“But - but why?” Hardison asks. “I got stretch marks on my thighs when I was a kid from growin’ too fast, but I don’t think my balls did the same. Did they? Did my balls grow too fast?” 

“Why’re you freakin’ out?” Eliot growls. “I  _ said _ it’s probably nothin’, and I  _ meant _ it’s probably nothin’.”

“I ain’t freakin’ out,” Hardison insists. “I just… what if it’s cancer, huh? Do my balls look swollen to you?”

Eliot grabs Hardison’s balls, which causes him to squeak. He handles them carefully, though, as he prods and rolls them. “No lumps,” he says gruffly. “No swelling or irregularities. You probably just - I don’t know - caused them to stretch somehow. Search it on the Google.”

Hardison rolls his eyes. “You know I hate when you call it ‘the’ Google.”

But he’s relaxing now, no longer hung up on the idea he might have testicular cancer. Parker shoots Eliot a grateful look, and he winks back at her. She ducks down to press her lips against the jagged lines, and Hardison must really be over his cancer scare because he can’t stop a moan from slipping past his lips. Eliot grins devilishly and adds his own mouth to the mix.

A bit further down on Hardison’s thighs, Parker finds the other marks he talked about, the ones from a particularly nasty growth spurt when he was young. She presses her mouth against them, less a kiss and more a slide of lips and tongue along skin. Hardison shivers, struggling not to thrust his hips. On his left thigh, along with the stretch marks, she finds another blotchy scar, this one about half the size of her fist. She cocks her head at it.

Hardison props himself up to look at what caught her attention. He’s breathing a little heavier, but his voice is steady as he winces. “Dog bite.”

Parker and Eliot both hiss in sympathy. “How old?” Eliot asks.

“I was, uh, thirteen, I think,” Hardison says. “I went over to a friend’s house and his dog came flyin’ outta the house and latched onto my leg. I thought he was gonna rip my balls off, but he just grabbed me right there on the thigh and wouldn’t let go.”

“Ouch,” Parker says. She kisses the scar. Eliot follows suit. “What kind of dog?”

Hardison stiffens under them. “I’d rather not say,” he says, avoiding looking at either of them.

Eliot bites his lips to hide a smile. “Means it was a little dog,” he tells Parker.

“Listen,” Hardison says, “little dogs are terrors, okay?”

“Was it a chihuahua?” Eliot presses. “Yorkie? With the little bow in her hair? Was it -”

“It was a weiner dog, okay? And I’ll have you know, those little shits were bred to fight badgers, so don’t give me any shit about being attacked by one,” Hardison says.

Eliot raises his hands in surrender. “A’ight, that’s fair. My uncle told me to never mess with a dachshund if I wanted to keep all my fingers.”

Parker cocks her head at him. “Your uncle Randy?” Eliot doesn’t talk about his family much, but he’s definitely mentioned Randy a couple of times.

Eliot shakes his head. “Uncle Marion. My dad’s brother. He breeds and trains huntin’ hounds, and he knows a lot about different breeds. He loves all kinds of dogs. Never met a dog that didn’t like him either. Even a mean junkyard dog would turn to butter around him.”

“Not me,” Hardison says. “Dogs have it out for me.”

“They can smell you’re afraid,” Parker tells him. Eliot nods agreement.

Down further along Hardison’s shins, Parker finds a long scar that he tells them came from falling off his bike when he was in his teenage years. She makes it all the way down to his toes, examining each one, and finding nothing. “Turn over,” she instructs.

He complies, and at the top of his back she finds a couple of little divots that he explains are old acne scars. Apparently he used to get pretty bad acne on his shoulders that he couldn’t help but pick at. She kisses each one, as well as a couple of moles that are clustered around his shoulder blades.

“So you do get out in the sun occasionally,” Eliot jokes, pressing a fingertip into one of the moles.

“Har-de-har-har,” Hardison says. “Least I ain’t gonna get skin cancer by age forty like some rednecks I could name.”

“No, you’re just gonna get ball cancer and the doctors’ll have to cut ‘em off and -”

“Enough,” Parker commands, which gets them both to settle down. She trails her fingers down to Hardison’s ass, then his thighs and the backs of his knees. There isn’t much, other than a few more stretch marks. She kisses the last of them, then sits back, satisfied with her handiwork. Hardison half turns over, propped up so that he can peer back at her.

“Finished?”

“With you,” she says and turns her attention to Eliot, whose earlier playfulness is gone and now he looks wary again.

“It ain’t gonna be fast or easy,” he warns her.

Parker shrugs. She might act hastily sometimes, when she knows what she wants and is ready to go after it, but for all her haste she does know how to take her time and do a job thoroughly. She doesn’t say this, though; she simply watches him assess her seriousness. A long moment passes with them just looking at each other. Even Hardison is remarkably still.

Then he seems to come to a decision as he lies down on the bed, arms and legs spread slightly. The better for his lovers to see as much of him as possible.

Hardison sits up. This is probably going to be the most difficult on him, Parker knows. She thinks about offering him an escape so he won’t have to relive all of Eliot’s injuries along with him, but that seems a bit insulting. So she just looks at him, trying to project as much reassurance and confidence as she can into her gaze. His smile is a little tight, but he nods.

Just like with Hardison, Parker starts at the top of Eliot’s head. She digs her fingers into his hair, feeling his scalp for any bumps or divots. She finds one almost immediately, parting his hair to get a better look at it. It’s difficult to see, but she can just make out a long, thin line of old scar tissue.

“Croatia, 1994,” Eliot says. He doesn’t elaborate any further than that, but it’s fine. Parker bestows a kiss on it, and Hardison does the same.

She finds another scar just above his left temple. That must’ve hurt at the time, and she wonders if he had a concussion from it. “Siberia,” Eliot says. “‘98 or ‘99.” Another kiss.

His face is covered in little mementos of his life, from the freckles across his cheeks to the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Like Hardison’s fingers, she can’t help but revel in the laugh lines, the lasting marks of happiness and joy. She traces them with the lightest touch, then follows with her lips. The freckles, she simply cradles his head in both of her hands and swipes over them with her thumbs. This brings her to that scar on his upper lip, the one she finds herself staring at sometimes.

“Seventeen years old,” Eliot says when she touches it. “Football to the face.”

“Oof,” Hardison says, though he sounds amused. “Weren’t you wearing a helmet?”

Eliot shrugs. “It was just practice. I wasn’t expecting Jimmy Hallfax to fuck up that badly. Jimmy bragged that he gave me a fat lip for a week afterwards, until I finally socked him in his own stupid mouth. Then we had matching fat lips.” He grins. “It was worth the detention.”

Eliot holds still as they kiss the little scar. Parker searches his lips intently, looking for signs of old splits. He’s certainly had more than his fair share of those, but maybe they don’t scar because she can’t see the evidence. She runs her fingers over the scruff on his jaw before edging up to his right ear where she knows she’ll find another mark: the tiny hole where an earring used to reside. There is a matching hole in his left, too. She pinches his lobe gently and rubs the piercing.

Eliot smiles. “Got those as soon as I left the army. Wanted to do something badass but didn’t want a tattoo. Tattoos can be used to identify you when you don’t want to be identified. Earrings are more anonymous.”

“But you don’t wear them anymore,” Hardison says.

“Not unless I need them for a disguise,” Eliot says. “Otherwise there’s too much risk of having one ripped out.”

“Which one’s the gay one?” Hardison teases. “Left or right? Does having both pierced make you bi?”

“Shuddup,” Eliot growls, swatting playfully at him. Hardison dodges, and Parker grabs Eliot’s hand to keep him still.

“Don’t make me tie you down,” she warns.

Eliot stills under her, and Parker remembers that binds were something Eliot expressed interest in. His pupils are definitely a little wider, and she is willing to bet he’s starting to get hard, too. Boys. They’re so predictable.

Satisfied that Eliot will hold still for now, Parker lets go and dips down to peck quickly at each earlobe. Ears are such a weird thing to kiss, but Hardison goes wild when she sucks on his, so she’s slowly getting used to putting her mouth on them. She moves down to Eliot’s neck, which is remarkably unscarred. Any close calls he’s had with knives pressed here or garrotes wrapped there have healed over without a trace. She places a kiss on his Adam’s apple anyway, grateful.

At his collarbone, she stops and sits back so that he can rise up just enough for her to pull his shirts off. Of the three of them, he sleeps in the most clothing most nights, something Hardison likes to tease him about. Parker likes seeing him shirtless - a rare sight unless they’re having sex. Even when he exercises, he usually keeps at least his undershirt on.

His chest and arms are littered with marks of his past. It’s difficult not to jump straight to the most obvious one - the still-angry half-healed bullet wound in his chest. Instead, Parker forces herself to take the same route she did with Hardison, starting with his left shoulder. Here she finds a jagged splotch.

“American Samoa, 2003. Stabbed with a knife.”

Kiss.

On his bicep: three lines of varying lengths. One - glancing blow with a machete, 2006. Two - cut with a ninja star, 1997. Three - falling off his bike, 1984.

Kiss, kiss, kiss.

A kiss for the cigarette burn in the crook of his elbow. A kiss for the marks on his wrist from ropes tied too tight that he had greased with his own blood to slip free. A kiss for each knuckle that has been split and healed so many times they’re made of pure scar tissue at this point. Back up to his collarbone and now down to his right arm.

Hardison has stopped chasing Parker’s kisses with his own by now. That’s okay. He sits at Eliot’s side, clutching his hand so tight his own knuckles have turned pale. It’s hard for him, she knows, just as she knows he feels bad that this is so hard. He didn’t have to  _ live _ it, after all. She squeezes their joined hands, reassuring and strong.

On the underside of Eliot’s right arm, Parker finds the bullet scar that they’re pretty sure Mikel gave him. It’s not as ugly and raw as the one on his chest, but nor is it as faded and subsumed as the one on his hip. When she runs a fingertip over it, he shivers under her touch.

“Sensitive?”

Eliot’s lips twitch slightly, like he’s considering not telling her the truth. “Ticklish,” he admits after a moment.

Parker’s eyes light up. She knows every ticklish spot on Hardison (and there are a lot of them; he’s pretty sensitive), but Eliot is always so stoic when she tries to tickle him. She files this information away for future use.

His right arm is much the same as his left, a scar here and there, mostly from weapons, sometimes from childhood mishaps. He was a far more adventurous child than Hardison, so he has more scars from his juvenile years. Although he was an only child, he had cousins who were more than happy to fill in the place of siblings, daring him to do wild stunts and getting into fights with him.

Then down to his wrists, more rope scars; palm, more angry cuts; knuckles, more split skin healed over and over. Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, until her lips become scratchy and her tongue runs dry.

She moves back up to his chest and rests her forehead for a moment against the bullet hole in his chest, taking time to let its  _ recent _ ness and its  _ here _ ness wash over her. She remembers seeing the impact, how Eliot stumbled. Eliot never stumbles. Her heart briefly stopped along with him. And then it kept going because it had to, because he did, too. He kept charging, hellbent on taking down the thing trying to hurt them.

Eliot’s hand comes up to the back of her head. “I’m okay, Moonbeam,” he murmurs, cradling her for a long moment.

Parker pulls away to look at him. “I know,” she says, and her voice is as steady as ever. She never cried when it happened. Hardison did, hours later when the adrenaline and fear had worn off, and he quietly unspooled in front of them.  _ You almost died, _ he said over and over again, and Eliot shook his head because no, two bullets would never be enough to stop him.

Now, just a few weeks later, the bullet holes have long since healed over, and the internal damage is almost gone. Eliot no longer limps, nor does he wince when he reaches for an ingredient off the top shelf. He has healed so fast that if Parker hadn’t been there herself she might assume the wound was a year or two old.

“Like goddamn Wolverine,” Hardison mutters, the annoyance in his voice meant only to tease. “I’mma start callin’ you Logan.”

“Logan?” Eliot snorts even though they both know who Logan is; Eliot won’t admit it but he actually likes the movies with Wolverine in them.

Parker kisses the scar and continues down his chest. The scars are plentiful here, some hidden by soft, pale hair. Eliot recites the origin of each one dutifully and Parker bestows her kiss on them in turn, until she comes to one that makes him pause. He frowns. Starts to say something, then stops.

“I don’t know,” he admits at last. “Sometime after the Army, sometime before y’all. Maybe when I was in Belgium? Or was it Switzerland…”

Parker adds a question mark to her mental blueprints, kisses the jagged scar, and moves on.

Down his belly to where his boxers hide the rest of him. When she eases them down, she finds that unlike Hardison he’s not hard at all. He flashes them a rueful smile, but Parker doesn’t mind. Hardison apparently doesn’t, either, because he doesn’t comment or tease. He simply presses closer to Eliot’s side and rubs soothing circles on Eliot’s chest.

“I ain’t gonna break,” Eliot informs him with a huff. His eyes say  _ I warned you this would be hard; you can leave if you want. _

“Never thought it for a moment,” Hardison retorts. His eyes say  _ Not for anything. _

Parker brushes her fingers over the old bullet wound and the tally marks on his hip. Her lips follow, but she doesn’t linger here for long. She knows enough about the tally marks, and is vaguely familiar with the story behind the bullet wound. It was the first time Eliot was shot, it was just a graze, etc., etc. The other hip is relatively bare, and his pelvis has far fewer marks than his chest. She gently shifts his genitals and finds a scar on his inner thigh uncomfortably close to his testicles. She raises her eyebrows at him.

“Gdansk, 2006,” Eliot says. “Guy offered the safety of my nuts for information. I ended up keeping both, but not before he tried to make good on his threat.”

Hardison hisses sympathetically. “I’m glad your nuts survived.”

“Me too,” Parker says.

Eliot rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Same.”

When Parker leans down to kiss this particular scar, Eliot makes a sound in the back of his throat that can only be described as a whine. Parker grins at Hardison, who snickers. “Sounds like Mr. Unaffected ain’t so unaffected after all,” Hardison teases.

“Shuddup,” Eliot growls. “As soon as we finish reliving the horrors of my past, I absolutely have plans to fuck you both senseless.  _ My  _ body just knows it ain’t time for that yet, unlike some dorks who can’t get enough because they went so long without gettin’  _ any _ .”

“Seriously, man? Seriously? Another virgin joke?” Hardison huffs. “That’s what started this whole thing in the first place.”

They’re teasing and laughing now, but when Parker moves down to the bullet wound in Eliot’s thigh, Hardison’s face clouds over and his lips pull into a tight line. He blames himself for that one, Parker knows. Eliot knows. They’ve talked it over a dozen times, sometimes just Hardison and Parker, sometimes Hardison and Eliot, sometimes all three.  _ You’re not to blame _ , they tell him over and over again, and he agrees, he says he knows.

And yet.

_ I shoulda removed the clip _ , his averted gaze says.  _ I’ve seen you do it a thousand times but I didn’t even think _ , the tightness of his lips says.  _ The gun was right by my foot and I just kicked it away _ , the absence of laughter says.

“Stop it,” Eliot says, raising his head to look at Hardison. His voice is soft and stern. “I’m  _ fine _ .”

“But you might not’ve been,” Hardison insists, still not quite able to look Eliot in the eyes.

Parker rolls her eyes. She’s tired of hearing this exact same thing a dozen different ways. “Eliot’s alive, and he’s ours. That’s all that matters. If all this -” She gestures at the entirety of Eliot’s body, at the scars both already accounted for and those still to come “- hasn’t killed him yet, then nothing’s going to.”

Eliot raises an eyebrow. “Well, I wouldn’t quite say nothing.”

“Nothing,” Parker reiterates firmly. Because she knows with irrefutable certainty that if anyone can fight Death itself and win, it’s Eliot. And he would fight anything to stay in this world with them. She knows. “You’re like Jack Harkness.”

Eliot groans and thumps his head back down on the pillow, and Hardison can’t help but grin. “Ooh, I can make that into one of Eliot’s aliases, too.”

“Doesn’t that make you Ianto Jones, then?” Eliot asks. “Fuck, I can’t believe I know that. I hate you both.”

Hardison laughs, and the tension eases. It’s not quite broken, and maybe it will never fade entirely, just like there will always be a scar to remind them of what happened on that train car. But for now, Parker presses a gentle kiss to the scar, like every other scar she’s catalogued so far, and moves on. Hardison adds his own kiss this time, maybe to bring some much-needed closure to the matter.

There are a few more scars on his thighs, some deep enough that they had to be stitched together. Most stitched by Eliot’s own hand. How odd, Parker thinks, that the healing itself sometimes leaves its own marks.

When she reaches his feet, Eliot rolls over without her having to ask. She goes back up to his shoulders and here she finds the exit wound for the bullet that entered his chest. There, a gash where he nearly took a knife to the back. Remarkably, there are fewer scars back here - mostly because few people can sneak back there without him knowing. She is amused to find scattered acne marks across the small of his back.

“What?” Eliot cranes his neck to try to see what’s caught her attention.

“Zit,” she says, poking the bit of skin in question. She kinda wants to scratch at it, just to see what would happen.

“Yeah, that happens when you sweat a lot,” Eliot says. His head is propped up on his folded arms, while Hardison cards his fingers soothingly through Eliot’s hair. “Leave it alone.”

“Let me know when you shower after a workout,” Hardison says, continuing to pet Eliot’s hair. “I’ll be more than happy to wash your back for you.”

“You’re still in bed when I finish my workouts,” Eliot retorts.

“The promise of seeing you in the shower might be enough to get me up,” Hardison says. He waggles his eyebrows. “And I do mean  _ up _ .”

Parker can’t help but run a fingernail over the zit, in spite of Eliot telling her to leave it alone. He hisses and jerks away from her, turning back over so fast Parker nearly falls off the bed. Only her own lightning fast reflexes keep her steady.

“Did that hurt?” she asks.

“ _ Yes _ .”

“On a scale of hangnail to gunshot wound, how much did it hurt?” she presses.

“I’m not answerin’ that,” Eliot says.

“Can I pop it when it’s ready?”

“ _ Parker! _ ”

“What?”

“That’s gross,” Eliot says at the same time that Hardison says, “Ew, no.” Parker squints her eyes at them. Such a silly thing to get so squeamish about. She doesn’t press the issue, though.

Instead, she points out, “I didn’t get to finish with your back.”

“There ain’t anything else back there, I don’t think.” He arches his back and runs his hand down the small of his back to his butt. He half-twists so that his back is towards Hardison. “See anything?”

Hardison scans the area in question and shakes his head. “Nope.”

Parker tries to roll Eliot back over, but he won’t budge. “Let me see,” she insists.

“No way,” Eliot says. “You ain’t gettin’ anywhere near my back again.”

Parker climbs back on top of Eliot’s waist. “Let me see.”

“Hell no.”

He tries to move her off of him, but she resists, grappling with him until he relents and she manages to pin his hands over his head. He stares up at her, heat intensifying in his eyes. The game is over - for now. At least until the next time she needs to add another mark to her mental blueprints. But now she is looking forward to the next part, and it seems that Eliot’s body agrees with her at last.

Hardison sits up, eager. “Mm, hell yes.” Parker turns towards him and he grabs her face gently and pulls her in for a heated kiss. Eliot’s hands slide under her shirt to dance across the skin just under her breasts. Teasing. Parker’s skin tingles in anticipation, and she can feel her pussy getting wet. She lifts up and resettles a little further down so that she can rub her boxer-clad lips against Eliot’s hardening cock. If he’s going to tease, she’s only too happy to return the favor.

Hardison breaks the kiss and glances down at Eliot. They share a look that communicates something Parker doesn’t quite catch. Hardison nods, and Eliot grins, and the next thing Parker knows she’s on her back in Eliot’s place, with both her boys over her. Eliot shifts slightly to the side to make room for Hardison. Eliot takes hold of her shirt while Hardison grabs her boxers, and then suddenly she’s just as naked as they are. Parker latches her strong legs around Eliot’s thigh and grinds against him, wetness leaking out of her. “Touch me,” she demands.

“In a minute,” Eliot says, easing out of her death grip. She reaches for Hardison’s cock, hoping to entice him instead, but Hardison simply takes hold of her hand and kisses her knuckles.

“It’s your turn, mama,” he tells her.

They start at the top of her head and together they kiss their way down her forehead to her eyelids to her nose and across her cheeks. They aren’t seeking out scars - there’s no way her whole face is covered with marks of her past - but they seem to be playing some sort of game of their own. Perhaps a game designed specifically to drive her wild, she guesses when they nibble that place behind each ear that makes her shiver. When they move down to her throat, her whole body arches.

“You missed a spot,” she tells them, struggling to keep her voice under control.

Obediently, they go back up to her lips, each kissing a corner then kissing each other and her at the same time, and it’s weird and crowded and a little squishy, but she loves it, she loves them and how ingenious they are, how creative. They break away from her for a moment so it’s just the two of them kissing in that fierce, almost competitive way they have. She watches, always delighted to see them put on a show. Hardison sinks his hands into Eliot’s hair and gives a little tug that makes Eliot moan. Parker puts a hand on each of their chests and runs her nails down towards their bellies. She loves the way their muscles jump and flutter under her touch. They pull away from each other after a few more kisses, and return to exploring every inch of Parker.

From her collarbone they make their way down her arms, following the same trajectory she set up with each of them. Everywhere they touch her, she tingles, electrified. She wants more, now, right now, but also the anticipation for when they finally reach the spots she craves most is incredible. Parker is not the sort to deny herself - when she knows what she wants, she goes after it with everything in her being. Now she is finding there can be pleasure in the waiting, in the delay.

Hardison and Eliot reach the end of her arms and give thorough attention to her hands. As Hardison places tiny kisses on each of her fingertips, Eliot decides to take two of her fingers into his mouth, reminiscent of their first time together when Eliot taught her how to give a blow job. The sight now is just as erotic as it was then, and Parker can’t stop her hips from snapping forward, desperate for contact. Nobody has even touched her clit yet, but it’s already tingly with need.

“Fuck, Eliot,” Hardison murmurs against Parker’s hand, eyes on their lover.

Eliot slides Parker’s fingers out of his mouth and shakes his hair back out of his face. “Maybe later,” he says, which causes Hardison to close his eyes and groan.

Moving in perfect synchronicity, the boys return to her clavicle and resume their explorations. Eliot still has hold of her hand, preventing her from touching him in any way, but Hardison is completely focused on her chest and has failed to do the same. She moves deftly, imperceptibly, and then suddenly he jumps as her fingers brush against his balls. It’s just a light, teasing touch, but she knows from experience that those are the sort that will drive Hardison out of his mind.

“Damnit, woman,” Hardison groans, wriggling against the bed, thrusting against whatever his cock comes into contact with.

“Parker,” Eliot says in a tone that is equal parts warning and amusement. “If you keep that up, he ain’t gonna be able to suck your tits.”

That gets Parker’s attention. As much as she loves teasing Hardison, she really, really wants his mouth on her breast. Eliot’s right - Hardison wriggling around is not a Hardison paying attention to his mission. She lets out a huff of air and draws her hand back.

Hardison lays there for a moment longer, catching his breath. “Evil,” he murmurs against the sheets. “You’re both incredibly evil.”

Eliot licks along the side of Parker’s breast and glances at Hardison out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, and?” He swirls his tongue around the tip of Parker’s nipple before taking it into his mouth.

Parker taps Hardison’s shoulder to get him moving again. He brings his hand up to her other breast and cups it gently. She taps him again, more urgently, and he obligingly squeezes harder. Parker closes her eyes, soaking in the different sensations: Eliot’s tongue, wet and blunt, versus Hardison’s fingers, dry and dextrous. They both feel good in their own way. Parker gasps when Hardison pinches her nipple, then moans when Eliot scrapes his teeth along the other one. Then Hardison decides to add his mouth to the mix, and Parker is  _ flying _ .

“Nipple clamps,” Eliot says, pulling off her breast for a moment, which earns him a glower. “Drink?”

Parker doesn’t even have to consider. “Drink. Yes. Cereal.” She had never really considered her nipples a conduit for sexual pleasure before, but her boys have awakened a realization that they are, in fact,  _ incredibly _ sensitive in the right context.

“I’ll add ‘em to the She Bop list,” Hardison says. They’ve been making a list of things to get from the local sex shop whenever they’re ready to start introducing the toys they discussed during the Never Have I Ever game.

Eliot and Hardison continue their journey downwards, which Parker feels is a terrible choice on their parts. Of course, that also means they’re heading for somewhere even more sensitive. She spreads her legs in anticipation. Eliot buries his nose in her side, just below her ribs. Hardison makes a brief detour around her belly button. Neither tickles, but she smiles anyway. 

Then they’re at her hips, circling around her pelvis and down to her inner thighs. She cranes her neck to look down at them just in time to catch a mischievous exchange of glances. Then Eliot’s mouth is on her clit, sucking and pulling and licking, and Hardison’s fingers slip down to brush feather-soft against her lips. She gasps, hips bucking forward, hands clutching anything within reach. She finds Hardison’s shoulder with one hand and Eliot’s hair with the other. She tugs, hard, which causes Hardison to hiss and Eliot to moan and suck harder.

Hardison’s fingers skirt around her pussy but never fully penetrate it. They all know by now that Parker has to be in a particular mood to want anything inside her, whether it’s a finger or a cock or even a dildo. She much prefers someone’s mouth on her clit or nipples. She’s even managed to come once or twice from one of the boys’ mouths, although her own hand is still the most reliable for that. She can feel the buzz building in her legs and hips, the one that says the pleasure is becoming exquisite.

Before she can begin chasing that feeling, however, Hardison’s fingers slip away and Eliot pulls back and wipes his mouth. Parker sits up sharply, squeaking out a protest.

“We ain’t finished yet,” Eliot says, with a truly aggravating smirk. He presses a quick, wet kiss to her lips before moving back down to her thighs. Parker flops backwards, huffing. Payback really is a bitch, she supposes. But when she licks her lips, she can taste herself and that’s a sensation that makes her smile.

At least the boys are just as ready for orgasm as she is, if the way they hurry to finish their exploration is any indication. They practically race their way down her thighs, over her knees, along the lines of her shins, to her ankles and feet. Finished, they slide back up along either side of her and move in close.

“Roll over?” Hardison asks, kissing his way along her shoulder.

“No,” Parker says. Maybe it’s unfair of her, but she wants her release and she wants it now. No more teasing for any of them.

“Fine by me,” Eliot says, scraping his teeth along the spot on her neck that causes shivery-sparks to radiate all along her spine and straight into her pussy. He dips his fingers low, scooping up some of the wetness between her legs. This he smears around one of her nipples before switching his attention there, licking and sucking and oh fuck, Parker’s brain short-circuits and her whole body lights up.

Hardison scoots back down, folding himself neatly at the foot of the bed so that he can position himself between her legs and - oh  _ fuck _ yes, his mouth on her clit and down along her pussy and back up, down and up and down until she is absolutely shaking with need. His tongue is so good and clever and Parker is  _ right there _ on the edge, her legs are practically vibrating. She thrusts up into his mouth, and Eliot chooses that moment to pinch her other nipple  _ hard _ , and she cries out, head thrown back in ecstasy.

So close, she is so close - Hardison won’t get her there, not this time, not even in conjunction with Eliot’s mouth and fingers on her nipples, but that’s okay - she knows now that it’s okay, she’s not broken or damaged, just wired in a finicky way and that’s really  _ fine _ . She reaches down, gently pushes Hardison’s tongue out of the way, and he sits back to watch as she immediately finds the right angle to make fireworks explode in her nervous system and pleasure drown out all other thoughts. She’s cresting, cresting, barely holding on, scrabbling for purchase on whatever she can reach. She thinks dimly that Eliot may have a few new scratches to add to his blueprints.

When she comes back to herself, Hardison is petting her hair and Eliot is whispering soothing words against her shoulder. She blinks drowsily.

“Welcome back,” Hardison says with a grin. His lips are still shiny-wet, and Parker wants to lick them clean. If only she had the energy to move.

“More?” Eliot asks, and she knows he means does she want more orgasms or was that enough?

Parker shakes her head.

Eliot chuckles. “Ain’t surprised. That looked intense.”

Parker doesn’t respond. Words have left her for the time being.

Eliot sits up. “C’mon, Parker. You gotta go pee and maybe take a shower if you’re feelin’ all ‘squishy.’”

Parker glances at their still-hard cocks and raises her eyebrows. It wouldn’t be the first time she got her orgasm and then left them to chase each others’, but this time she doesn’t want to miss out on the fun. She makes a V with her first and middle fingers and brings them up to her eyes, then out. The ASL word for “see” or “watch.” Eliot’s been teaching her some signs for when she gets like this, when her mouth won’t work but she’s got something they need to understand. And of course Eliot knows sign language because they have yet to come across  _ any _ language he doesn’t know at least a little bit of. She adds the sign for “want” to make sure to get her point across.

Hardison and Eliot look at each other. “Go on, mama,” Hardison says. “You know Eliot ain’t gonna stop mother hennin’ until you at least pee, and we’ll still be here when you get back.”

Eliot lightly smacks the back of Hardison’s head. “I ain’t mother henning her, I just don’t want her to get a UTI. Keep it up and I’mma follow Parker into the shower and leave you to deal with that on your own.”

“Deal with what, exactly? Oh that’s right, my  _ monster _ cock. Your words, not mine.”

“I regret ever knowing you.”

“Liar.”

“Shut up.”

“Make m-mmmf.”

Parker slips out of the bed and lets them duke it out. It’ll only take her a minute to pee, and by the time she gets back they’ll be so absorbed in each other they’ll barely notice her. They’ll be kissing and grabbing and thrusting and rubbing against each other. Maybe Eliot will push Hardison flat onto the bed and slide down to deep-throat him. Maybe Hardison will pull Eliot tight against him and take both of their cocks in one hand and stroke them together. Maybe Eliot will turn Hardison around and slip his cock between Hardison’s thighs, not quite ready to take the next step towards penetrating him. Maybe Hardison will use his incredible persuasion skills to talk Eliot into letting him rim him.

Parker hurries to the bathroom, eager to get back quick. Each moment that passes is another tick on their blueprints, and she doesn’t want to miss any more than are necessary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I am. So. So. Sorry. But this will probably be the end of Operation: Cereal. I'm keeping my list of add-on ideas, so maybe when my brain circles back to Leverage I'll be able to keep writing this 'verse. I hope when the new season starts airing, this particular obsession will resurface, because there is still SO much to explore. I wanted to do a Hardison-backstory exploration in the Nana fic, and reunite Eliot with his estranged family, and let the OT3 explore all the fun kinky stuff they talked about in this fic. Sadly, I just can't concentrate on it anymore.
> 
> The good news is, my new obsession is sort of tangential to Leverage. Basically, my old obsession with SPN has resurfaced due to all the crap that went down in the last month, and I found out C Kane guest-starred on an episode. Now I can't stop thinking of Leverage/Supernatural crossovers, and if I can get myself to settle down and watch all 15 seasons of SPN (I stopped around S8 near as I can figure), I might actually *write* the crossover. In the meantime, if you're interested, stop by my Tumblr and ask for my headcanons because believe me they are *wild*. darkwingdukat.tumblr.com/ask 
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading, and I hope I will have more goodness to offer in the future.


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